


light as a feather

by damaskrose



Category: The Get Down (TV)
Genre: (mentions only), Canon Bisexual Character, Canon Compliant, Fix-It, M/M, Near Death Experiences, Overdosing, Period-Typical Homophobia, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Rebirth, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 14:14:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14594766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damaskrose/pseuds/damaskrose
Summary: None of his other brushes with death have been like this, staring down a little black pinpoint of the end that's as infinite as a black hole, unable to do anything.Dizzee experiences a brush with death on the train tracks and has a moment of clarity. A fix-it of sorts for that cliffhanger ending.





	light as a feather

**Author's Note:**

> I can't fucking believe I have to live my life now knowing if Dizzee Kipling is dead or alive! Anyway, I am eternally frustrated at the cancellation of The Get Down and Dizzee's ambiguous fate, so I wrote this to fix at least ONE of the problems the season finale set up. Loosely inspired by some things the creators have said/implied about Dizzee's experience with the train being more of a rebirth than a literal death.

Dizzee's always been pretty good at dodging death.

People call him lucky when they aren't calling him weird ( _ That Kipling boy, he's gotta have some damn good luck not to get run over when his head's in the clouds all the time _ ), but they don't know the skill it takes. To know the labyrinth of the subways and train tracks like the back of his hand. (Better, even, because his hand is only a hand, only flesh and muscle stretched over bone, only ten clever fingers and ten fingernails with cracked nail polish. Not a million miles of grimy concrete and rusting metal stretching away into identical tunnels and tracks, echoing with the rumble of trains. Not a thousand thousand dark corners that could hide anything). To know where to lose someone, where to find someone, how to make yourself just another shadow on the wall. To keep on running even when his breath grates against his throat like the edge of a knife and the bag of paint cans slams against his leg hard enough to bruise, unable to stop because behind him only worse things wait. To focus only on the paint in his hand and the vision in his mind instead of the million things that could go wrong. Even to know how to stop paint from dripping and letters from warping.

Nah, Dizzee's got luck, but he's also got skill.

But skills can only stretch so far, and luck always run out.

That's what he's thinking that night, cops on his heel and dogs even closer, adrenaline burning through his veins like a drug, like fire, like the only thing that matters.  _ This had to end sometime. _

Because, dammit, he's not an idiot, even though some might say that. He's always known that they'd catch him one day, next week or in ten years, but he couldn't let that stop him. Couldn't let them win.

Know the danger but run the risk, he's always thought. That's bravery. That's rebellion.

So that's what he's thinking as he and Thor run from the cops. (Well, that and how if he's caught his parents might be so angry that they'll just leave him in jail, which is some pretty great incentive to keep running.)

And, honestly? It would be pretty fucking ironic to go out in style right after he's decided to drop the whole graffiti thing, except the cops probably wouldn't appreciate that, so he keeps running.

The world is distilled to the shouts behind him and the cans banging against his side and the slap of his feet on the ground and Dizzee has never felt so fucking alive, not even on stage with a mic in his hand or amidst a hurricane of paint in Thor's apartment, which he kind of hates because all he can hear is his father’s voice in his head saying he's got a death wish.

Really, he's got a life wish, is all. People don't seem to understand that living in fear isn't living at all.

But it seems like they're going to make it, is the thing. Like this will be another story they can dredge up later and laugh over.  _ Yeah, man, we were close that time, weren't we? _ The shouting is getting a little fainter, like they aren't on top of him anymore, and he can't feel the hot breath of the dogs on the back of his legs. The cops are slow, and they don't know this place like he does.

Except then there's the fence. The  _ fucking _ fence, gleaming in the moonlight like it's taunting him, looming closer and closer with every sprinted step. Then he doesn't have any more time to think because the chain links are right in front of him, and then he's scrambling up, hooking his feet in the metal loops, clawing and twisting like an animal, hurling himself over like his life depends on this.

(Which is kind of does, some small, snide part of his brain says, because even if he survives this, his parents will definitely kill him.)

And then he's on the other side, mind still blank and tangled with panic. He stumbles, gets up, keeps running, even though he can feel the cold night air through a tear in his pants and his knee is burning, a hot liquid coursing down his shin.

He doesn't know if Thor made it over the fence, but he can't stop to look back. Fuck, this was so much easier when there was only one of him (not that he'd go back to before, that he'd trade this partnership for anything), but he still can't stop.

He hears a yelp, a grunt–human or animal he doesn't know–but he keeps running because to look back is to get caught.

He doesn’t need to look back to know that they’re gaining. That they'll catch him if he doesn't do something.

The dark night stretches out forever. Silent, hulking trains like giants' toy blocks loom all around him. The moon above a silver, uncaring disc in the velvet-black sky.

Dizzee feels calm for a moment. The shouts of his pursuers fading away and his heartbeat is the loudest thing in miles. He can feel each prickle of his breath and and pulse of his veins.

The gaping mouth of a subway tunnel opens yawns ahead.

He's diving towards the entrance without a thought, without even a second to check for an incoming train, and the shadows swallow him up as he keeps running.

There's a cramp in his side that hurts like hell and Thor,  _ where is Thor? _ , but the light and sounds of pursuit from behind are still echoing off the subway walls and he can't stop.

There's a low rumble under his feet, like the subway is purring, a grinding-screeching sound of metal on metal growing closer and closer, and then a great growling, blinding-metal shape rounds the corner.

_ Train _ , is all he can think, an endless loop eating up the rest of his mind and rooting his feet to the ground.

_ Train. _

It bears down, and all Dizzee can think is that death is finally here for him in a distant, tinny part of his brain that has passed through fear and come out on the icy other side.

He's had practice at this, in a way. Facing down death. He's just never blinked first.

Once when he was a baby, before Ra and Yolanda, before he was even called Dizzee, he was wracked with a fever for days, as the story goes, and nothing seemed to cause or cure it. Hope had been given up for a day before the fever broke and he lived. The neighbors called him the Miracle Boy for months after, not that he can remember that. Sometimes, though, he swears he can remember it, lying in the cradle that went on to house his siblings, the world warped from fever and his throat too dry to cry, but that can't be true, of course.

And then there was the night at Shao's club as the world tilted beneath him in more ways than one, liquid gold and the feel of life slipping out from his hands.

Dizzee's always been pretty good at dodging death. He’s clawed his way back to life more than once. But maybe third time's the charm.

He's thinking that as the train bears down, down, down.

_ Death might come knocking more than once, but someday you gotta answer the door. _ A little snippet of one of his mother's bedtime stories plays in the back of his mind. Something about a man who tells Death his story and keeps clinging to life.

A story? Does his life have a story?  _ I'm Marcus Kipling, the weird Kipling brother. _

_ I'm Dizzee, the boy with paint under his fingers and a microphone between his hands. _

_ I'm a son. _

_ I'm an older brother. _

_ I'm a Get Down Brother. _

_ I'm an artist. _

_ I'm a criminal. _

_ I'm a boy who runs. _

_ I'm a boy who hides. _

_ I'm a boy who makes art for all to see but hides in the shadows. _

_ I'm a boy who makes himself into an idol onstage but hides so many truths offstage. _

He's so many things, so many people. Layer after layer, mask after mask, all true and false in some ways.

_ I'm an alien in a top hat. _

_ I'm Rumi. _

He thinks of that day in Thor's apartment before Shao found them.

_ I'm ready to go to my first opera. _

_ And I am  _ not _ ready to die here. _

They're heavy, those other versions of himself. The true and the false, the ones he put on to please others, to hide his real self. They're a weight, a disguise he doesn't need. They've served him well, but he doesn't need them anymore. He wants to paint under the light of day and kiss Thor in the open, to shout his truth into a microphone in front of a crowd.

They are heavy now, weighing his feet down down down.

_ Let go let go let go let go _ sing the rails beneath his feet.

_ Let go let go let go let go _ howls the train bearing down.

He can feel all those unneeded versions of himself clinging like summer heat, like cobwebs, like autumn leaves on their last breath.

And he lets them fall.

It feels like that time he cut his finger bad helping make dinner–a breath of air cool and sharp against a place that's never felt it–but without the slash of pain that followed.

The world clicks back into normal speed–he didn't even realize it was slow and golden again, like the first time he saw Thor out of prisoner–and he is light on his feet now, diving off the rails and smacking against the wall with a sting he doesn't even feel with the adrenaline burning in his blood.

_ I'm alive. _

_ I'm Dizzee, I'm Rumi, and I'm alive. _

The train is a wolf of steel and iron howling past, but it can't reach him here, and he's trembling so hard he doesn't even care.

None of his other brushes with death have been like this, staring down a little black pinpoint of the end that's as infinite as a black hole, unable to do anything.

The train keeps rumbling past–he wonders if anyone inside could possibly know what just happened out in the black tunnel, not that  _ he _ really knows–as he's huddled against the wall. Something inside seems raw and open, like the gap when a tooth falls out or a skin bare of bandages.

_ Rebirth. _

The word echoes throughout Dizzee's mind like ripples in a pond. He didn't just dodge death this time, he walked clean through it. He's not just alive, he's alive again.

It's a second chance at life. At being who he really is.

And he's ready.

By the time the train finishes squealing past, his hands have stopped shaking as they fidget his rings.

Dizzee's finger touches on a silver ring he borrowed from Thor and  _ oh god, where is Thor? _ He doesn't want to be Orpheus, making his way through death but leaving behind the one he loves.

He's up and stumbling down the tunnel before the thought even finishes completion, out into the silver wash of the moonlight.

And there he is, carefully making his way across the yard, blond hair glowing in the light.

_ Thor. _

Dizzee lets out an incredulous laugh that's almost a sob, relief flooding through him, and half runs towards Thor.

"Oh, thank God." He can barely get the words out and instead settles for throwing his arms around Thor, who is as steady as ever.

Thor's arms wrap around him and for a long moment they're in their own little world of their making, a little universe where nothing can reach them.

Reluctantly, he pulls back. "I thought they nearly got you," he gets out.

"So did I," says Thor, and Dizzee sees a hint of that new fear that's been growing in his eyes since prison. Then it's gone, replaced by a grin. "But I'm Thor, man. They can't keep me for long."

"Yeah," Dizzee says, and it comes out more choked than he meant.

"You okay, Dizz?"

Dizzee shakes his head. "Yes. No. I don't know." Thor waits. He's patient like that, never pushing too hard. "I almost got hit by a train in one of the tunnels. Just...close. Really close."

"Want to talk about it?"

He shakes his head again, this time meaning it. He's not ready to talk. Not yet.

"That's cool." Thor gets it. (Thor almost always gets it. The rare times he doesn't get it, he's still willing to try.)

"I think I need some coffee," Thor declares, likes he's announcing a quest for the Holy Grail.

"You hate coffee."

"Do I?"

"Yesterday you said it tasted like it had been strained through dirty socks and made people's breath smell just as bad."

Thor shrugs. "Guilty as charged. I mean, I love that sweet caffeine rush as much as the next guy, but you know I speak the truth ."

Dizzee laughs. "What, worried that no one will want to kiss you with coffee breath?"

"Nah, I'm lucky enough I've got someone who'll want to kiss me no matter what my breath smells like."

"Oh? What're they like?" Dizzee keeps his tone light like normal, but he really needed this, in a way. The banter, the jokes, the normality of it.

Thor's voice gets kinda soft right then. "A genius. A fucking genius, who's got galaxies in his mind and stars in his eyes. Who's always changing and never cared what others think, in a good way."

Yeah, Thor gets it.

"I think I'd like to meet this guy," Dizzee says.

Thor sighs dramatically. "Alas, he has a bad habit of making fun of emergency caffeine fixes, so he's not perfect."

Dizzee rolls his eyes. "Coffee it is."

Thor presses a light kiss to Dizzee's forehead–he smells of the tunnels, and of paint, and, below that, something undeniably Thor–and it kind of hurts his heart how free they can be with affection now, under the cover of darkness, when during the day they could never walk down the street hand-in-hand like other couples.

"Let's leave this place behind, Rumi," Thor says, and for a second Dizzee imagines that he means this city, this country, this planet, like they could blast into space and waltz among the stars and look down on a world too small to ever hurt them. But there's beauty in this planet too, art and music and laughter, all mixed in with the bad like seaglass at a beach, and the stars are plenty beautiful from down here, anyway.

"Yeah, let's go, Thor." Dizzee finds Thor's hand in the dark, twins their fingers together, rest his thumb on the palm of the other boy's palm. "Let's go somewhere new, for the new people we are."

"New people? We only went to the Grove yesterday," Thor says, naming a usual hangout.

Dizzee looks up at the sky, like he can look past the city smog at the stars gleaming like a handful of diamonds scattered across the velvet black. "Yeah. New people.” He turns to face Thor. He looks gaunt and silver in the moonlight, like something from a story. “We're always becoming new people, that's how I see it. We're all streaking through time and space like comets, putting on and taking off new masks and changing what we look like under them. We are never silent, never still; we're never the same each day.” When Dizzee reaches out to cup Thor’s face with one hand, he feels like the only point of warmth in a cold galaxy. “Don’t you get it? We are reborn every second, again and again, but it's only sometimes we realize it."

**Author's Note:**

> Here's a post (not mine) that goes into some more detail about Dizzee's experience being a rebirth and not a literal death, is anyone is interested: http://getdowndizzee.tumblr.com/post/159655038282/flydizzeebidizzee-moon-ridden-not-sure-if


End file.
